New Jobs Open Up at Chicago Manufacturing Lab

A manufacturing lab in Chicago is planning on opening up new positions for local residents, due to several new public and private digital projects. The plan is to hire 50-70 jobs within their organization, according to Crain’s Chicago Business.

The public-private manufacturing lab, Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute, is brand new and will be located at Goose Island in Chicago, according to President Barack Obama. There is a long list of organizations, companies and universities to be involved in the partnership, with over 40 companies and 23 universities. This includes General Electric, Dow Chemical Co., Deere and Co., Boeing Co., Caterpillar Inc., The University of Chicago and Purdue, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois.

Hiring for the facility on Goose Island will be approximately 50-70 people, according to mechanical engineering professor at University of Illinois, William King. King is planning to be the chief technical officer at the new manufacturing lab and institute. There is also going to be some existing assets put into the manufacturing lab, including the University of Illinois in Champaign and their National Supercomputing Center.

Funding for the institute, totaling $320 million, has come from various sources within public and private sectors. This includes $250 million from the U.S. Department of Defense. They are happy to report being able to create many job opportunities in the Chicago area for those sufficient and skilled in the manufacturing and digital field.

The focus of the lab, according to King, is going to be combining the research opportunities and capabilities between businesses and large universities (and small ones), to find resolutions for different problems they each have. One of the things they will focus on is gathering data that has been generated through manufacturing processes, including how it works, the amount of time it takes, what mistakes potentially cost businesses and universities, and everything involved in the process.

King has an example used by a typical engine maker, showing why this new project is going to benefit the companies and universities. If an engine maker has hundreds of parts coming in from different suppliers, the data received from this project can help him or her discover what parts are best suites together for creating an optimal engine. The products get assembled with higher quality and much more quickly, eliminating a lot of error and guesswork.

They are planning on having the institute be a digital hub, the first of its kind. It will provide more competition between companies, improved digital technology, and better tools all with the help of their manufacturing data processes and research. It is largely based on other institutes in other countries, particularly the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, where the companies collaborate and share their research.

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